THE HAN ERA AND ITS AFTERMATH        279
White waves rise round us in mid-stream,
The rowers chant to lilt of lute and drum:
Amidst our feasting sad reflexions come:
The foot of age how sure, youth's span of life how brief.
(c) The Price 0f Empire
(100 b.c.)
(The lady Hsi-chun, married to a nomad of Central Asia
for political reasons, laments.)
My own people have married me off 5
An exile in this far-off corner of earth.
They've sent me to an alien land
To the old chief of an alien danj
My home a tent
With walls of felt,
My food raw meat
Mare's milk to drink:
Of mine own land I ever think.
And sad my lonely heart doth beat.
O that I were a yellow crane,
And to my own might fly again.
(d) K*ung-Jung on his Dead Infant
The father sent on an imperial mission
Will return when the year is at an end,
And coining home will ask to see his son.
To hear only the wailing of the women ..«,
Holding up his robes he'll seek the grave
Among damp wormwood and greenery:
There under a small mound lie the little bones,
The flesh is dust already on the wind,
Born, he knew not his begetter:
Dead, who will know his spirit,
Abandoned to wander in the darkness
Homeless and uncherished ?
Ah! I had looked to you to bear my name
And still my thought cleaves to you, my child.
One's days are doubtless numbered, yet I cry
Why should Fate allot so few to you, ah why ?